# Synesthesia



## Equinoxe (Aug 17, 2010)

I though that synesthesia might be an interesting subject since I would love to know whether there are other synesthetes on this forum. 
_(if you don't know what synesthesia is, Wikipedia can probably help you)_

I identify myself as a grapheme → colour synesthete, as certain letters, words and numbers 'feel' like they are a certain colour, for example, 'e', '4' and '7' are green, whereas 'b', 'o' and '3' are bright red. It's not insanely strong, and I only 'see' the colours in my mind, but it's still strong enough to make me notice it in everyday life.
Plus looking at that 'synesthesia 0123456789' picture in the article makes me cringe because the letters and numbers are all coloured wrong :/


Do any of you think you are synesthetes (if you didn't know of this 'condition' before, did reading that Wikipedia article make you think "Oh but this is exactly like me"?) and if you do, what type are you?
I'd really be interested in hearing if you have experiences with different types than my own :U


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## Tailsy (Aug 17, 2010)

I'm not, but I'm quite boring so that's unsurprising!

I associate sounds with words ('incest' is crackly, by the way), I guess, but that's as close as I'll ever be :P


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## Cap'n Sofa (Aug 17, 2010)

I don't know whether I built up these associations or if I am actually a synesthete, but I would seem to have grapheme --> color synesthesia. "1" and "A" are both yellow, "Z" is dark blue, "P" is bright salmon (that's the weirdest of the lot), "Q" would be purple...not actually visibly, but if I'm just looking at one...the color comes to mind. Some have multiple colors, like sometimes "Q" is the same dark blue as "Z", though "Z" always stays the same.

But my friend has concept --> color synesthesia (he says "death" is tan and so on), and my assistant forensics coach has smell --> pitch synesthesia (bleach smells high-pitched, smoke smells low-pitched, so on).


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## nastypass (Aug 17, 2010)

Do all the letters have different colors (I know you mentioned b, o, and 3 being red, but are they the same shade of it?) or do some repeat?  Are characters you aren't familiar with (like Cyrillic, or Greek letters) affected as well?  What about things that aren't pronounced, like (, ^, or !? Are d and D the same color? 

Sorry if I seem like I'm asking way too many questions at once, I'm just really curious about this.  :V


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## Shiny Grimer (Aug 17, 2010)

I have music -> color. To me, all songs have a color attached to them that is intrinsic. I can see it in the back of my mind when I listen to the song. I guess this would be a good time to say that I visualize music and sounds. Different sounds "look" different. It's weird to explain, but it is, once again, like a picture in the back of my mind (and it's that color, too!). Really lush songs with a lot of instruments make a really nice "image" in my head.

Other than that, nothing. :p


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## Equinoxe (Aug 17, 2010)

I have to say, Sofa, you should get the people you mentioned here to tell more about their types, they seem pretty fascinating :O 

And ..., I think that's pretty intriguing too. My mind apparently doesn't do it, but song names that have strongly 'coloured' letters may make me associate the song with the colour.
(though now that I think of it, sometimes I get these fractal-flame-kind of images in my mind from classical music :X Dunno if it's anything like yours)



Walker said:


> Do all the letters have different colors (I know you mentioned b, o, and 3 being red, but are they the same shade of it?) or do some repeat?


Some of them repeat, for example 3 and b are pretty much the same red, whereas o kind of feels a teeny tiny bit more orange. Some letters don't really feel like they have a colour at all, the strongest are the ones I mentioned as examples (especially e, 4, and 7).



Walker said:


> Are characters you aren't familiar with (like Cyrillic, or Greek letters) affected as well?


Not really, though some of the Greek symbols that are more close to me for a certain reason, have colours (beta is red, alpha is yellowish-green) but their colours might not be purely synesthetic. :V



Walker said:


> What about things that aren't pronounced, like (, ^, or !? Are d and D the same color?


They don't really have their own colours, I'm pretty sure of it. At least in my case, but I have a feeling someone else's brain might give them colours too :U
And I really don't mind the questions, it's such an intersting subject :D


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## Jester (Aug 17, 2010)

... said:


> I have music -> color. To me, all songs have a color attached to them that is intrinsic. I can see it in the back of my mind when I listen to the song. I guess this would be a good time to say that I visualize music and sounds. Different sounds "look" different. It's weird to explain, but it is, once again, like a picture in the back of my mind (and it's that color, too!). Really lush songs with a lot of instruments make a really nice "image" in my head.
> 
> Other than that, nothing. :p


This would be really useful to help me with my fail attempts at music.

Do you work with music, By chance?


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## Dinru (Aug 17, 2010)

Taste - > color. Barbecue Sauce and Mountain Dew both taste the same shade of green, and McDonald's chocolate milkshakes are a dull salmon color. Otherwise, nothing particularly notable about it.


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## Music Dragon (Aug 17, 2010)

I have person → colour synesthesia. Bigoted people are white, enslaved people are black, ubiquitous people are yellow etc.


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## Spoon (Aug 17, 2010)

I don't have synesthesia, but I do have a friend who might have it. She's mentioned that the word 'discipline' tastes like syrup.


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## #1 bro (Aug 17, 2010)

... said:


> I have music -> color. To me, all songs have a color attached to them that is intrinsic. I can see it in the back of my mind when I listen to the song. I guess this would be a good time to say that I visualize music and sounds. Different sounds "look" different. It's weird to explain, but it is, once again, like a picture in the back of my mind (and it's that color, too!). Really lush songs with a lot of instruments make a really nice "image" in my head.


I have this too, except 9 times out of 10 it's just based on the cover of the album art. :P A few of my favorite albums, though, have a different color for each song (on _In Rainbows_, Bodysnatchers is red, Weird Fishes is blue, All I Need is purple, Reckoner is yellow, and pretty much everything else is a shade of pinkish-orange, and on _Dark Side of the Moon_, Breathe is blue, Time is yellow, Great Gig in the Sky is green, and Money is red). Also I used to really hate music I perceived as this color, the Strokes being a really prominent example of that style. 

That's about it for me. My grandma was once telling me though about how she associated different numbers with certain personalities ("8 is a fat man, very friendly though") which I guess would be Ordinal Linguistic Personification.


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## Zeph (Aug 17, 2010)

I generally have colours for most things. Like, uh, a few examples:

Red: Monday, Square, 2004
Blue-Grey: Thursday, Rectangle, 2008
Orange: Friday, Table, 2006
Purple: Specific sour tastes, 2007
Golden yellow: Sunday
Bright yellow: Indeterminate high-frequency sounds, 2002
Mid-green: Wednesday, 2003

So, yeah. Days, shapes, years (Only recent ones though), tastes, sounds, objects - There's also people, which I won't give examples off, and to an extent graphemes.

I used to think it was ordinary D:

EDIT: Reading back at other's posts, I also definitely have smell -> pitch, word -> onomatopoeic sound, and I do to an extent visualise music.


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## Elliekat (Aug 17, 2010)

I associate colors with the sounds of some words and letters, sometimes based on what they mean ('sunny' is yellow) and sometimes not (so is 'Wednesday' and the letter A.)

Also that one where months and numbers have geographical locations. 2008 is farther away than 2007. (2007 is also yellow, orz)


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## ultraviolet (Aug 18, 2010)

I associate colours with words and numbers, but not always letters. I associate colours with names, too and I find that they tend to change based on the relationship I have with a person of a particular name.


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## @lex (Aug 18, 2010)

What you mean not everyone is synesthetic? o.o

I'm sure we've had a thread like this before, anyway.

Monday: red or black
Tuesday: light blue
Wednesday: yellow
Thursday: brown
Friday: red
Saturday: black or blue
Sunday: light yellow

I also have colors for songs, although way too often they just seem to be the color of the album :<


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## Teh Ebil Snorlax (Aug 18, 2010)

I associate people with colours. My friends Neil and Orla are sky blue and pale blue respectively, my friend David is green, my girlfriend is purple, etc.

Also I "see" music but not as colours, I see them as lines being drawn across a white background. For example, arpeggios are loops.


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## Elliekat (Aug 18, 2010)

I'm wondering about all of you- have you generally always known you perceived stuff that way, or were you like me and read the article and were like, "wait, I think this too"?

I read a book or article about someone with synesthesia one time and was all 'wow it would be kinda cool to have this' and then when I read the article here I was all 'wait... the letter _A_ does sound yellow!' 

Also the letter E sounds flat and gray, but an 'e' sound on the end of words (like with a y as in leafy or happy) make it yellow sounding :/


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## ... (Aug 20, 2010)

I believe I'm sound -> color. I associate certain ambient sounds (Birds chirping, moving water, driving in the car, footsteps, etc.) with faint colored lines or shapes that grow and/or move around in my mind. For example, footsteps are a small starburst of red and green at the very center of my vision, and I can associate certain people's voices with various other lines or shapes. It's almost like an oscilloscope in my mind. And one of my favorites is rain and thunder. Raindrops hitting the roof are thin horizontal pinstripe lines that slowly move up or down. They get thicker and more jagged if the rain is really heavy. 

Oh, and listening to music is amazing. People wonder why I like really dark and moody stuff such as heavy metal and drone doom songs (Such as Sunn O)))) but it's because the heavy guitar and bass look like waves and stuff that has that strange muddy-rainbow look of oil on water. It's really neat, and I love experimenting with guitar feedback and stuff just so I can see it. It's like a visual sound fetish. o_O


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## ZimD (Aug 20, 2010)

i don't think i really have it. i mean i occasionally perceive certain letters and shit as being certain colors but i can't like see sounds or anything. so i don't really have it more than i'm assuming most people do, i don't think that it's overly uncommon to identify numbers or letters with colors on SOME level.

i always wished i could like. visualize music. i feel like it would be cool


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## nothing to see here (Aug 20, 2010)

Hmm... don't think I have anything like this.  But...



> Taste - > color. Barbecue Sauce and Mountain Dew both taste the same shade of green, and McDonald's chocolate milkshakes are a dull salmon color. Otherwise, nothing particularly notable about it.


...this sounds exactly like my sister.  Well, not the specific food/color examples (she says cheese tastes green, ultra-processed fast food tastes black, and something else I can't remember--some kind of vegetable maybe?--tastes yellow), but still.


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## Zuu (Aug 20, 2010)

I'm not synesthetic.


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## Hiikaru (Aug 20, 2010)

Letters and shapes and words have colours.

Actually, it's one of those things where I have trouble with the idea that others don't also do this. If you don't give them colours, how do you picture them...? Black? Doesn't that count as a colour? Or is it that if someone tells you to envision an A, you can't see anything at all...? What's the deal?

Each letter has a particular colour or a couple of different colours, mostly primary. Words and influenced by the colour of the first letter the most, but sometimes by the rest of the letters, and probably occasionally by the meaning. If I'm thinking of letters by themselves or just a few letters, I'll generally think of their colour, but I don't automatically think of all words with a colour. Names in particular definitely have colours, but if I'm thinking normally then most of the normal words are black. I sort of think that the difference between words and letters would be that I generally think in sentences and paragraphs, not in individual words. This makes sense, since names (which are more colourful) are a bit more isolated.

Shapes have very specific colours that they don't really deviate from. All squares and rectangles are red, all circles are blue, all triangles are yellow... With letters seeing the wrong colour (for instance on a strip of letters in a classroom) bothers me a little but it's pretty easy to ignore. With shapes, I really can't stand to see the wrong colour unless there are multiple or it's an item in a video game or something. If I'm just reading a random page and suddenly there's a picture of a green square, that just makes me crazy.



> Do all the letters have different colors (I know you mentioned b, o, and 3 being red, but are they the same shade of it?) or do some repeat?


Many repeats. Mostly red, blue, yellow, or green. Other colours are still basic shades though. Nothing so complex as alternate shades.



> Are characters you aren't familiar with (like Cyrillic, or Greek letters) affected as well?


I don't really imagine other characters, so it's hard to say, but I have some vague colours for Japanese characters and characters I make up. Those colours might solidify if I used those character sets more often, and... it might be the case that those colours are based off of the colours for the Roman alphabet, for instance the Japanese ka seems red, but then so does K. 



> What about things that aren't pronounced, like (, ^, or !?


I guess I usually think of those as black, but even the ones that are black (most of them) have an alternate actual colour. Exclamation marks are red, question marks are blue, the and sign (&) is yellow, asterisks are blue... 



> Are d and D the same color?


Yes. In that case, D and d are both red. With other letters, for instance R, there are multiple colours (red/blue/green) and then the lowercase only has one of those. Small r can't only be red.

/blahblahblah

...Additionally, I think the letters used to have fewer alternate colours. And I think  couple of them have changed colours over time.

It isn't really important or useful, it's just that if I'm imagining letters and shapes then they tend to be specific colours.



> Sorry if I seem like I'm asking way too many questions at once, I'm just really curious about this. :V


I don't think anyone _really_ minds answering trivial questions about themselves.

*Edit:*



> have you generally always known you perceived stuff that way, or were you like me and read the article and were like, "wait, I think this too"?


I think I pretty much always thought of those things with colours, but it didn't really occur to me that it was supposed to be unusual or anything until my dad was watching a show about it. He proceeded to ask me what the colours of things were several days after that and revealed after a while that he was testing me to see if I kept the same colours.


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## #1 bro (Aug 20, 2010)

Hiikaru said:


> Exclamation marks are red, question marks are blue, the and sign (&) is yellow


holy shit same here!! :O


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## @lex (Aug 20, 2010)

Elliekat said:


> I'm wondering about all of you- have you generally always known you perceived stuff that way, or were you like me and read the article and were like, "wait, I think this too"?
> 
> I read a book or article about someone with synesthesia one time and was all 'wow it would be kinda cool to have this' and then when I read the article here I was all 'wait... the letter _A_ does sound yellow!'
> 
> Also the letter E sounds flat and gray, but an 'e' sound on the end of words (like with a y as in leafy or happy) make it yellow sounding :/



No, I've always been like this. Well, maybe not for the entirety of my life, but you get it. I have also considered it at times ("hey, it's funny how I see colors in letters..."), and eventually I read about synesthesia and realized that's what I have.


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## Flygon1 (Aug 20, 2010)

While I do not have any involuntary synesthesia (e.g. reading things in color, tasting sounds), I do have some vestiges of it. It's very easy for me to visualize songs in my head, especially if I listen to them often (drums are yellow or grey, synth is often deep red, etc.). 

One odd thing is that letters and numbers have personalities and gender to me, as well as an associated color (not that I see it, but if I had to write the letter in a color I would choose that one). For instance, the letter h is female and purple, and is rather protective of her little brother i (who is blue) from the evil, yellow-orange j. Yeah. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Number_Form--colored.jpg 

Similar to my number line in style, although mine is black and white. It's... confusing, to say the least. I don't think the 10 through 20 area can even exist in normal space, which is why I haven't drawn it.


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## Minish (Aug 21, 2010)

Yeah, I definitely am. I associate colours with nearly everything in my mind. Not to a strong or conscious degree, just a sort of backdrop to most things.

My most prominent forms are without a doubt personification and number form, with a bit of grapheme and slight sound and lexical. Numbers and letters (especially letters) have very specific colours and personalities to me (although less like personalities and more like... characteristics?) to me. The same goes for the days of the week.

I... guess I always knew I was this way, but it's more like I couldn't imagine not being this way. I mean, what do other people imagine in their minds when they see a letter? Just... a boring, hard, cold couple of lines? For me, language has always been a delight because it's a beautiful mix of colour and texture.

I'm going to do a big post here when I have time, because my synethesia is just the kind of thing that I could go on about for ages - plus, I agree with a lot of other things you guys have put and have my own questions!

I'm beginning to think that my sound synethesia is becoming a bit more obvious to me. I thought I only connected certain songs with colours because of their titles, but now I'm thinking it might be a mix of the two. Take the song I'm listening to right now - Plug In Baby by Muse. I'm using it as an example because it's very, very, _very_ much a golden yellow song. I listen to it when I really need some gold in my mind, it's just such a clear sensation. The name itself is very golden, Muse's vocalist's voice is very golden, the way the guitar is played in it is very golden. It's actually quite rare a single song is this straight-cut for me.

Haven't got time now to check the article (though it looks fascinating), but is it usual to have more than one (or quite a few) forms, to varying or even equal degrees? :/


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## nyuu (Aug 22, 2010)

I don't have synesthesia!
(I think everyone associates things related to one sense with things related to the others, just a bit. It's not quite the same as having the full-blown condition.)


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## Saith (Aug 22, 2010)

Well when I hear the word green, I hear the word green, which is weird.

And a couple of these words _do_ look rather white, but then that might be the font, so~


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## Michi (Aug 22, 2010)

I have sound → color synesthesia, but not as vividly when my eyes are open, if that makes sense. Every night when I turn out the lights and close my eyes to listen to my iPod, it's MUCH more vivid. Also, I seem to only have this with music, not other sounds.

I also have the apparently "lexical → gustatory" type of synesthesia which I honestly, really thought everyone had. :P

... Wait, is there a specific term for "sight → smell?" I mean, when I see and image or a real-life scene I smell stuff that is not necessarily involved with the image, but sometimes it is. For example, Dezzuu's avatar makes me smell mint. o.O


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## Zuu (Aug 22, 2010)

I seriously refuse to believe 90% of the posters in this thread.


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## Michi (Aug 22, 2010)

Dezzuu said:


> I seriously refuse to believe 90% of the posters in this thread.


Besides the fact this is a documented and studied phenomenon that may occur in 1 in 23 people, you just think we're crazy? :P I don't blame you.


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## 1. Luftballon (Aug 22, 2010)

I will then disbelieve 95.6% of these people.


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## Zuu (Aug 22, 2010)

Little Monster said:


> Besides the fact this is a documented and studied phenomenon that may occur in 1 in 23 people, you just think we're crazy? :P I don't blame you.


I know full well that synesthesia is documented.

I also don't think that all of you are really snowflakes.


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## Adriane (Aug 22, 2010)

Maybe I just can't visualise/whateverise the concept, but the whole thing seems vaguely bunk to me.

I tried to think about it; maybe as a musician, I might have musical -> something synesthesia! or something, but then I think "well, a d-flat sounds/looks like the colour orange" or "an F7 chord tastes like a ripe banana" and I'm just. What.


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## Aisling (Aug 22, 2010)

I dunno, I've always associated food and color, but usually it's colors invoking a flavor, instead of food making me think of a color... which way is it supposed to go? From what I'm reading it seems like "when you look at a number your brain perceives it to be red" so color seems to be the secondary thingy, or whatever.


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## Zuu (Aug 22, 2010)

it happens with all senses afaict Alraune.


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## #1 bro (Aug 22, 2010)

I think with most people here this is less "wires in the brain are messed up and sensory input gets muddled synesthesia" and more "learned the alphabet from a book where each letter was colored something different and now permanently believes A to be blue synesthesia". I mean as far as I'm concerned Alabama, Delaware, and Michigan are yellow, Maryland and Mississippi are pink, Oregon is green, and Indiana is red, but I can definitely trace that back to a placemat I had as a kid. So I tend to believe most of these guys. Either way, I really don't see what these dudes have to gain by making up something on a pokemon forum to make them seem a tiny bit more interesting.


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## Zeph (Aug 22, 2010)

Zeta Reticuli said:


> I think with most people here this is less "wires in the brain are messed up and sensory input gets muddled synesthesia" and more "learned the alphabet from a book where each letter was colored something different and now permanently believes A to be blue synesthesia". I mean as far as I'm concerned Alabama, Delaware, and Michigan are yellow, Maryland and Mississippi are pink, Oregon is green, and Indiana is red, but I can definitely trace that back to a placemat I had as a kid. So I tend to believe most of these guys. Either way, I really don't see what these dudes have to gain by making up something on a pokemon forum to make them seem a tiny bit more interesting.


Yeah - I'm pretty sure a lot of my stuff (notably shapes->colours came from children's books or whatever; I don't really see why I or anybody else would make this stuff up to be honest. I can understand why one would be sceptical about it, but it's not the most fascinating thing to make up.


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## Tailsy (Aug 24, 2010)

I find it strange that people 'visualise' things at all. I just hear words, and get images of places I've been or whatever I'm making up in my head. When I'm daydreaming it's just lots of images and sounds run together, like a film!

Words don't come up with any kind of 'form'. I _know_ what they look like etc, but I don't think about them like that. I just hear 'em. :B


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## Shiny Grimer (Aug 24, 2010)

Zeta Reticuli said:


> I think with most people here this is less "wires in the brain are messed up and sensory input gets muddled synesthesia" and more "learned the alphabet from a book where each letter was colored something different and now permanently believes A to be blue synesthesia".


To be fair, that wouldn't really be synesthesia since synesthesia is not supposed to be learned.

As for people lying about themselves... honestly, why would anyone? Synesthesia is common enough that it's not special. I know other synesthetes IRL. It's not like a big deal or a huge rarity or anything; it's just a neat little oddity. It just seems like a weird thing to lie about.

I used to go to a forum once that had a topic about synesthesia and most people seemed to have grapheme -> color or music -> color. There was one person who had number -> personality and another who had people -> color. The rest of the population didn't have synesthesia so they didn't post, obviously.


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## @lex (Aug 24, 2010)

Flygon said:


> One odd thing is that letters and numbers have personalities and gender to me, as well as an associated color


Oh yeah, this reminds me...

0 is male and black
1 is male and yellow
2 is female and lime green
3 is male and green
4 is female and blue
5 is male and orange
6 is female and light red
7 is male and dark green
8 is male and yellow
9 is female and red

2 is very masculine, 9 is a bit of a tough girl, and 1 is sort of the novice and maybe alone... 7 and 8 are "those two guys", and 0 is pretty... empty, personality-wise. 5 is the real manly man, 4 is the smart and pretty girl, and I dunno about 3 and 6... pretty ordinary, perhaps.


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## Zuu (Aug 24, 2010)

I wasn't implying that people were lying. I was implying that people didn't actually know what they were saying.


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## Diz (Aug 24, 2010)

Well, I think I have something like this,  but I'm not entirely sure. Music makes me think of colors, (Don't Go Breaking My Heart is a nice dark red with yellow highlights) and certain scents make me think of colors. Like a particular perfume makes me think of purple.

Also the days of the week have personalities. Thursday is a bigger jerk than Monday.


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## Shiny Grimer (Aug 25, 2010)

_Ditto_ said:


> Don't Go Breaking My Heart is a nice dark red with yellow highlights


It's light blue for me. :P


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## Zuu (Aug 25, 2010)

alright. I'll post one last time (unless someone responds to me again):

I just don't think you guys have a grasp on what synaesthesia actually is. it is not a series of unconscious associations having to do with taste and sight and sound. it is a neurological disorder that causes involuntary sensory experiences in a sense other than the sense that is actually being stimulated. that said, this gender + personality with graphemes isn't even close to synaesthesia, it's just kind of quirky.

I mean, do you understand? "B makes me think red" isn't synaesthesia. when you look at a B and it is _actually red_ -- that is synaesthesia. a type of synaesthesia, anyway.


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## Saith (Aug 25, 2010)

Dezzuu said:


> alright. I'll post one last time (unless someone responds to me again):
> 
> I just don't think you guys have a grasp on what synaesthesia actually is. it is not a series of unconscious associations having to do with taste and sight and sound. it is a neurological disorder that causes involuntary sensory experiences in a sense other than the sense that is actually being stimulated. that said, this gender + personality with graphemes isn't even close to synaesthesia, it's just kind of quirky.
> 
> I mean, do you understand? "B makes me think red" isn't synaesthesia. when you look at a B and it is _actually red_ -- that is synaesthesia. a type of synaesthesia, anyway.


This.

There was that one composer guy who thought they dimmed the light in the theatre so that it was easier to see the colours.


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## PK (Aug 25, 2010)

I don't know if this is even real or just all in my head, but i have noticed that whenever i hit my funny bone or some other nerve, i taste a sweet taste. This has been going on for several years.


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## Minish (Aug 25, 2010)

Dezzuu said:


> I just don't think you guys have a grasp on what synaesthesia actually is. it is not a series of unconscious associations having to do with taste and sight and sound. it is a neurological disorder that causes involuntary sensory experiences in a sense other than the sense that is actually being stimulated. that said, this gender + personality with graphemes isn't even close to synaesthesia, it's just kind of quirky.
> 
> I mean, do you understand? "B makes me think red" isn't synaesthesia. when you look at a B and it is _actually red_ -- that is synaesthesia. a type of synaesthesia, anyway.


Actually, no. Ordinal-linguistic personification (the association of gender and personality characteristics with graphemes) is very much synesthesia. Do _you_ know what you're talking about? It's not exactly very broadly researched but why is this not synesthesia and the others are? Everywhere I've seen about synesthesia acknowledges this as a type so how did you decide this?



> Rather, like color blindness or perfect pitch, synesthesia is a difference in perceptual experience and the term "neurological" simply reflects the brain basis of this perceptual difference


I don't claim to know a great deal about the neurology behind synesthesia, but implying that we have no idea when I'm pretty sure most people in this thread have the diagnostic criteria -



> Neurologist Richard Cytowic identifies the following diagnostic criteria of synesthesia:
> 
> Synesthesia is involuntary and automatic.
> Synesthetic perceptions are spatially extended, meaning they often have a sense of "location." For example, synesthetes speak of "looking at" or "going to" a particular place to attend to the experience.
> ...


Considering that about 1 in 23 people apparently have it, I doubt that all of them know exactly what synesthesia is (and I'm sure some don't even realise that not everyone else experiences the same things as them), but if they realise one day, "ooh look, I have exactly what neurologists tell me I have" and think it's kind of interesting, perhaps they're not being special snowflakes and, y'know, genuinely have it to some extent? :/


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## Zuu (Aug 25, 2010)

Cirrus said:


> Actually, no. Ordinal-linguistic personification (the association of gender and personality characteristics with graphemes) is very much synesthesia. Do _you_ know what you're talking about? It's not exactly very broadly researched but why is this not synesthesia and the others are? Everywhere I've seen about synesthesia acknowledges this as a type so how did you decide this?


[does more research and then sinks in chair]

I acknowledge that you are all snowflakes (assuming it is involuntary and not arbitrarily assigned, when it comes to grapheme personification).

that said, I still highly doubt that so many people in this thread have _other_ types of synesthesia but fine I guess it is possible (though improbable)

(I will say, however, that I personally don't think that it should classify as synesthesia as I wouldn't align "personification" with any of my senses? it's one of the reasons I was fighting this in the first place (not to mention I am slightly jealous))


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## 1. Luftballon (Aug 25, 2010)

(wait can I claim syllable->sound? I read out loud.)


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## Coroxn (Jul 12, 2011)

Damn it. I haven't noticed anything before reading that article, but now that I read the thing about Personification, all these letters and numbers have personalities that make sense. T is an old, bitter, hunchbacked man, whilst C is a beautiful girl with black hair, who is intensely shallow....They really feel right for me, and I've always kind of done it. I remember making my own Letterland series when I was a kid, and I would always tell my brothers stories about them. I don't know if it's actually Synesthesia, or just my mind playing tricks on me.


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